a study in hitachiin
by ARandomFangirler
Summary: Kaoru, for all his talk of loyalty, is not blind to his brother's flaws.


They say you can't remember much before the age of three, but Kaoru knows different; he recalls the only two minutes of his life alone after the birth of his brother with resounding clarity. He recalls the darkness of his mother's womb and the pressure on his head and the sudden increase of space as if it were only yesterday. But above all, Kaoru remembers seeing his brother's face for the first time in light, and never looking away, unblinking, blood calling to blood.

* * *

Let's take this one from the top: Kaoru is sixteen years old and playing child's games in Ouran at night when he realises, with cool, sludging dread, that Hikaru is in love. For Hikaru, sixteen and unknowing and unkind, love makes him cruel, possessive. Love turns Hikaru's heart to stone. This Kaoru knows. This Kaoru fears.

He knows he shouldn't worry about Haruhi. If Kaoru lies to himself, he can say that Haruhi is _like them_ ; like calls to like, after all, and Haruhi is the only outsider who knows what makes a Hitachiin beyond name and face and net worth. And Hitachiins never hurt their own. But Haruhi isn't a Hitachiin, and Hikaru has hurt Haruhi before, and love turns Hikaru blind. On the contrary, it has always made Kaoru more perceptive. What had she said? _10% less ornary._ Haruhi is rarely wrong.

So Kaoru sits next to Class President Kazukiyo Soga and tries not to think about Haruhi's dress underneath fluorescent grocery store lights or the ill-fated Karuizawa date he set his twin up on. Love makes Kaoru see things he wishes he couldn't. He speaks of pumpkins. He thinks of her anyway.

* * *

The first time Kaoru is alone with Haruhi for more than ten minutes is in English class; Hikaru, in a fit of boredom, has pissed off the wrong person - this time their English teacher, so Hikaru gets told to work with the teacher and Kaoru partners up with Haruhi instead. He tells himself that he isn't noticing the light smatter of freckles on her nose, the one loose strand of hair that sticks to her forehead. Kaoru, in the habit of a lifetime, is used to telling himself convenient half-truths. She is talking about noun declensions, or verb endings, or something, but when Kaoru says he hangs onto Haruhi's every word, he's never really talking about the words themselves. Haruhi, to him, is more conceptual than real: she is a cool breeze, a perfect grade, a design Kaoru scribbled down on a napkin once and promptly forgot. Or maybe she's just a girl, and he's just a boy. Rich kids have a flair for the dramatic, after all, and Kaoru isn't just any old rich kid, he's a Hitachiin to boot.

Anyway, she's talking, and he loves it when she talks, loves it when she gets passionate about something that interests her. She'll make a cracking lawyer someday, he thinks, if she doesn't ruin Kaoru entirely before that. Hikaru and Kaoru are never supposed to be the ones being toyed with, but whenever Haruhi speaks, Kaoru always has the distinct impression that the tables are turned. Whether or not he's right is never clear.

"What's got you in such a good mood?" she asks him, and this is before Halloween, and Kaoru is still playing pretend. Her mouth is half-wrapped round a smile, hesitant, as if she's scared he's going to refute her observation and be difficult old Kaoru, Kaoru who never gives a real answer and hides behind a cheshire-cat grin. Kaoru is tired of being that boy. He thinks he'd like to grow up now. He looks at his brother, silhouetted against the window, and knows he can't.

"Nothing," he says, his lies not just to protect himself anymore. Yes, this is before Halloween, but Kaoru isn't stupid. Love blows Kaoru's heart wide open. Love tears him apart.

Her mouth is the colour of cherry blossom. In all the books Kaoru has read, love is compared to flowers, yet Haruhi turns him inside out. The weight of his twin's agony holds him down, a million promises condensed into one. Kaoru knows all about crossing lines. Haruhi is the most dangerous one of them all.

"Hmph," she responds, her eyes alight with stars and her head overflowing with dreams. He envies her. He covets her. "It's unlike you to be so reticent."

It is not Kaoru whom love makes a fool of. He holds his tongue.

* * *

People forget that Kaoru plays the long game. Long before he made a living swindling the affections off teenage girls with charades of tempestuous romance, Kaoru was cruel. Kaoru can still be cruel. Kaoru runs his hands down his jacket once, twice, and itches to lash out.

We don't always get what we want. Kaoru is used to thinking in _we_ s, is used to the art of give and take (though far more well versed in the _take_ , after all). Still, Kaoru has never wanted more for this than anything in his life. They say you can't remember much before the age of three, but Kaoru can remember, and he is yet to remember anything more painful than this. Want chokes him. Love splits him. His brother is fucking up what Kaoru has chosen to let go.

People forget. They always do.

He knows what Kyoya would say. Kyoya thinks love can be broken down into numbers; three thousand yen for a trinket, fifty thousand for a meal. Eight million for an antique vase. Kaoru knows that figure well. No, he knows what Kyoya would say and he doesn't want to hear it. _Everyone has a price._ Kaoru is scared of finding out that even she can be bought. Kaoru is scared of finding out that she can't be. They say it's the most inconvenient truths that bring the world to its knees.

A million years ago, he recalls asking a maid to tell him and his brother apart. _Nobody ever will._ You were wrong, he thinks, and Haruhi's eyes blindside him. Kaoru knows how his brother quantifies love. Hikaru thinks love is a choice - Hikaru thinks love is determined only by individuality and judgement of character. Kaoru isn't so sure. Kaoru stopped thinking you could do any of those things a long time ago. He's not sure when, but he's sure of why.

The _why_ drags his brother around Karuizawa with gentle determination. Kaoru plays the long game, after all. He makes sacrifices for those he loves, and he loves Hikaru and Haruhi the most. And Kaoru is ranked fourth academically in his class of thirty; he knows that sometimes you have to make hard choices for the sake of the greater good.

The greater good isn't seeming so great now that he's facing it. Haruhi looks directly at Kaoru through the foliage he's hiding behind. She doesn't say anything.

He doesn't know why he's so disappointed, except he does, and he pulls the band-aid on his face off with such force that he hears rather than feels the sting.

* * *

Most women marry men like their fathers. Tamaki, much to Hikaru's delight and Kaoru's internal alarm, is far too much like Haruhi's father for his own good. Kaoru can't shake the feeling that, on the grand staircase of life, he's missed a step.

* * *

A bartender in Costa Rica once told Kaoru that nice guys finish last. Kaoru isn't a nice guy, and nor is his brother, but he knows that he isn't in first place. First place is a tie between Kyoya and Tamaki, even if Kyoya isn't trying. _Everyone has a price._ Kaoru can't help but wonder what's Kyoya's.

(Kyoya stopped trading in money a long time ago. His price is secrets. His price is desire. His price is kissing Kaoru, just once. Kyoya's lips are chapped. He says, _keep your options open_. An eye for an eye; they're both familiar with that kind of debt. Kyoya, for the most part, leaves Haruhi alone after that.)

Tamaki is unbuyable, just like Haruhi. They say that it's because they're pure at heart. And Kaoru doesn't have to ask what his own price is; it stares back at him whenever he glances on the mirror, hangs onto his wrist, sleeps in his bed. Twins are born each other's fallacies. Kaoru will do what it takes to get ahead. Nice guys finish last, and everyone has a price.

Hikaru, at least, has the virtue of not knowing.

* * *

" _You always look so sad," she tells him, sitting on the grass before class._ So do you _. It turns his tongue to glue. "I can never quite figure you out, Kaoru."_

 _He wants to kiss her._

 _Instead, he says, "I'm not a mystery. I'm just as real as you."_

" _I know," she replies. "That's what trips me up."_

 _He looks at her mouth, and back at her eyes. Haruhi's face is set with challenge. "Do it," she invites, "or you'll never know."_

 _Kaoru knows his Bible, and he knows Eve did not have to taste the forbidden fruit to know that it was forbidden. Kaoru is not Eve, though, and Haruhi is not an apple. "Do it," she repeats, and this close, he can smell her cheap shampoo, the sweat sticking to her forehead, the undercurrent of roses in the air. Her lashes seem impossibly long. "Kaoru."_

 _He kisses her. In all the books Kaoru has read, there are fireworks and violins whenever a kiss occurs. Kaoru isn't sure about violins, but he's fairly positive about the fireworks. When he pulls away, she's staring at him with flushed cheeks and a furrowed brow._

" _That bad?" he asks her, and she shakes her head immediately._

" _I love you," she says._

" _Don't say stupid things," he hisses, and her eyes are the colour of molten chocolate._

" _I'm not the stupid one," she says, and her face morphs into Hikaru's. Kaoru recoils. "Am I, brother dearest?"_

He wakes up in a cold sweat, the taste of betrayal still coppery on his tongue. It feels all too familiar, these days.

* * *

Tamaki loves nostalgia, hence the purple dress code. The bride, bathed in white - not so much.

It should be sacrilege, Kaoru thinks, to marry a woman like Haruhi and leave her sitting alone for the majority of the reception. She doesn't seem like she minds, though; she's deep in conversation with Kyoya, the furrow of her brow creating a little pucker on her forehead as she listens to what he has to say. It always does that, when she's listening to something that she knows is right but dislikes nevertheless. He wants to get up and smooth it out for her.

It's her wedding. He doesn't.

Tamaki, as always, flirts with the idea of romance. He is in love with love, and ensures that everyone knows about it. Kaoru catches sight of an old high school photo of him and winces - of course the Host Club haunts him wherever he goes. Tamaki'd better pray that nobody notices his wife is in a boy's uniform for most of those old high school photos, he can't help but think with a wry smile, or he'll have some very difficult questions to answer. The thought cheers Kaoru up enough to encourage him to get a drink, get drunk, forget. Kaoru always forgets. He's tired of remembering.

Here's a secret: Kaoru does not hate Tamaki for taking his place. Kaoru grew up a long time ago, and he's practiced in the art of letting go. At least for Tamaki, love turns him to putty, malleable and easy. Better that than stone, he reasons. Better Tamaki than his brother. Kaoru, for all his talk of loyalty, is not blind to his and Hikaru's flaws.

"Finally," a familiar voice says in his ear, and when he spins around, she's looking right at him. Haruhi does not really suit the glossy pink lipstick she's wearing, but her cheeks are flushed with exertion and her eyes seem very wide. The forehead pucker is gone - she's grinning. "It's about time I saw a real friend."

This used to drive Tamaki up the wall in high school, Kaoru recalls. He'd always hated that the twins were so friendly with her, hated that they spent time with her out of Host Club and even their multitude of shared classes. Tamaki didn't like the thought of a relationship he could not control. He's glad that she still thinks of him as a friend. She has always been his.

"I saw you with Kyoya," he mentions, and she raises a dark eyebrow at him. "Is he not a friend, or have you disowned him in the past five minutes?"

"Kyoya is more of an extortionist than a friend," she remarks dryly, taking the champagne flute from his hand and draining it, her mouth pressed to the same place his had been. A million indirect kisses, he thinks, and shudders. "You, on the other hand, are one of my dearest classmates."

"You do know that's going to send your groom into a depressive spiral if he hears," he says, and Haruhi laughs. It send a tingling down his spine, one that feels familiar in a way that Kaoru can't quite place.

Behind all the posturing, though, her eyes seem sad. "Haruhi," he begins, a little quieter, a little softer, and she immediately shakes her head, ruining what Kaoru knows has to be hundred-thousand yen curls.

"Don't," she says, and her voice breaks. She quickly embraces him so that, to any outsider, it's just the happy bride hugging a childhood companion. She whispers, "Kaoru, please don't do this to me. Not tonight."

He could play dumb and say, _I'm not doing anything._ Neither of them are dumb, though, and he's not about to insult her intelligence. Unlike his brother, Kaoru has always felt too much. From the other side of the room, Kyoya is looking at them with a faint frown.

 _Keep your options open_ , he'd told Kaoru, but clearly he'd never told Haruhi the same. Her face is wet with tears. Most brides don't cry over this. Most brides aren't Haruhi.

"I'm scared I picked the wrong man," she chokes out. "I think-"

"It's okay," he says, even though it's not. People are probably staring, but he can't let her go, not yet. "Haruhi, it's going to be okay. Do you want me to find Tamaki?"

"I'll take it from here," Kyoya announces smoothly, removing her from his grasp. Despite her red eyes, she seems remarkably put together still. "We wouldn't want to make a scene."

His voice is laced with warning. "I'm fine," Haruhi protests, but Kyoya gives her a look and she quiets. He passes her off to some distant relative of Tamaki's who appears delighted by her, and immediately returns to Kaoru's side, posing as two friends consorting over glasses of wine.

"I tried to tell her," he says, as casually as though he's discussing the weather. "I talked to her, out on the terrace and now here. It's killing her, but…"

"She's not going to leave him," Kaoru finishes grimly, resisting the urge to keep moving, keep dancing. Live and forget. It isn't much of a life, constant excess and impermanence, but it's the one he has. It's better this way, to accept the hand he's been dealt. "I know she loves him in her own way. She's not going to hurt him like that."

The memory of Kyoya's mouth on his swings between them like thirty pieces of silver. Tamaki, blonde and golden and lovely, is the opposite of them both - the opposite of dark, shrewd Kyoya and manipulative, uncontrollable Kaoru. _Nice guys finish last._ Not this time, it seems.

"I'm sorry it didn't work out for you," Kyoya says after a moment. Age has tuned his lanky features into something graceful and carved, and he looks like an inkblot against the lilac of his best man's suit. "I really am."

"I thought I wasn't like my brother," Kaoru says, voice tremulous. "I guess I was wrong."

"You aren't like him at all," Kyoya disagrees. "I didn't collect all that information on you for nothing. That I can tell you for free."

Kaoru wonders whether he truly can be summed up in a manila folder, in a blood type, in a star sign and school records. He doesn't know how much Kyoya knows about him, and he doesn't want to. Hikaru, speak of the devil, approaches, some cheap French thing clinging to his waist like a leech. "See?" Kyoya says, and touches Kaoru's forearm before melting back into the crowd.

* * *

"People might talk, you know," Kaoru teases on the way to the airport, the cool night air making every hair on his neck stand on end. He's a terrible driver and normally pays people to do this for him, but this is a favour to Haruhi. He does a lot, in favour of Haruhi. "A nice girl like you in cahoots with a rapscallion young heir…"

"I don't think anyone uses the word rapscallion anymore, Kaoru," she snorts, her face illuminated by passing streetlights. Kaoru wants to go back to Ouran, wants to go back to sunlight and cherry trees and something less liminal. He wants to go back to six months ago, when Haruhi first booked this ticket. He wants to change the past, and tell her the truth.

"Are you excited for Boston?" he changes the subject, presses down harder on the acceleration pedal. Kaoru's avoided the subject until now, but no point ignoring the elephant in the room, he supposes. "I hear that there's plenty of museums."

"It's going to be hard," she begins. Her voice shakes, and she swallows. "I've never been so far away from home before."

"You'll have Tamaki," he reassures, an unspoken promise. "And we can video chat, you, me and Hikaru. We'll even fly in if you miss us that badly. You'll be sick of us by the time you come back."

She manages a watery smile, and presses her head against the window. Kaoru has seen pictures of Haruhi in middle school, and she looks like that now, her face slack with emotion and exhaustion. He jerks his gaze from her and back to the road - it's empty at this time of night but Kaoru always gets himself into dangerous predicaments when he looks at Haruhi for too long, and that's when he's _not_ driving.

"I don't deserve you all," she sniffs. Haruhi has curated a slightly clipped, professional accent in her years at Ouran. Now her vowels shake. "I'm so lucky to have a friend like you, Kaoru."

"Have you been drinking?" he deadpans, and she laughs.

"A little," she confesses. "I keep thinking I've made the wrong decision. I've never particularly wanted to travel. What if I'm secretly just doing this for Tamaki's sake, and then we break up and I'm stuck in a foreign country with no friends?"

 _Then don't go,_ he wants to say, but that's not what she wants to hear. In the watercolour palettes of passing cars, she appears abstract, painted red and white and blue. How's that for irony?

"You? With no friends?" he scoffs. "Get real, Haruhi. Those Americans will be crawling over you like ants. You're going to have the time of your life, and we'll have to drag you back to Japan kicking and screaming."

"Yeah?" she asks with a half-smile.

"Yeah."

"It's you I'm going to miss most," she confesses, the words tumbling out of her mouth like curses. "I wish things were different between us, Kaoru."

They're at the airport now, and Kaoru's going to have to pay an arm and a leg for parking. He doesn't care.

"So make them different," he says. Haruhi smiles again, but looks away. "Nobody's going to see you here apart from me."

"It'll break Tamaki's heart," she says, and she kisses him on the mouth, short and sweet. Her face is wet. "Promise me you'll call."

"I promise," he whispers, reverent in the night. "Promise me you'll pick up."

She nods. She gets out of the car, brings her suitcase with her.

Haruhi doesn't look back.

* * *

"You're in love with Haruhi," Kaoru tells his twin. Hikaru visibly recoils, as if he's been shocked, even though Kaoru knows he's probably started the long process of figuring this out for himself already. He's not going to watch that happen, though. _Nice guys finish last._ Kaoru is in last place anyway. Fuck the long game. Kaoru lost the moment he entered. "I'm going to help you win her heart."

There's no such thing as a happy ending, he thinks. _We don't always get what we want._

Blood always outs. They say you can't remember much before the age of three, but they say a lot of stupid shit, Kaoru knows. They say _nice guys finish last_. You cannot change the past anymore than you can shape the future. Time is forever gold in a miser's hands.

"How can I repay you?" Hikaru asks.

 _Everyone has a price._ Kaoru sold himself to the devil for free. Hikaru is not the man for Haruhi, but nor is Kaoru. In the end, love only ever makes Kaoru more selfish.

The future is always calling. Kaoru comes back to this decision year after year, time after time. He never knows whether he's right; he never knows whether he's wrong, either, so at least there's that.

"You can't."


End file.
